It was true. There was a dark stain in her crotch and one pant leg was soaked.
“It’s all right,” I said.
I poured Lydia a drink and she sat there holding it in her hand. I couldn’t hold my drink in my hand. No one spoke. A short time later there was a knock on the door. I got up in my shorts and opened it. My huge, white, flabby belly hung out over the top of the shorts. Two policemen stood at the door.
“Hello,” I said.
“We’re answering a disturbance of the peace call.”
“Just a little family argument,” I said.
“We’ve got some details,” said the cop standing closest to me. “There are two women.”
“There usually are,” I said.
“All right,” said the first cop. “I just want to ask you one question.”
“O.K.”
“Which of the two women do you want?”
“I’ll take that one.” I pointed to Lydia sitting in the chair, all pissed over herself.
“All right, sir, are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
The cops walked off and there I was with Lydia again.
29
The phone rang the next morning. Lydia had gone back to her place. It was Bobby, the kid who lived in the next block and worked in the porno bookstore. “Mindy’s down here. She wants you to come and talk to her.”
“All right.”
I walked over with 3 bottles of beer. Mindy was dressed in high heels and a black see-through outfit from Frederick’s. It resembled a doll’s dress and you could see her black panties. There was no brassiere. Valerie wasn’t around. I sat down and twisted the beer caps off, passed the bottles.
“Are you going back to Lydia, Hank?” Mindy asked.
“Sorry, yes. I’m back.”
“That was rotten, what happened. I thought you and Lydia were finished?”
“I thought we were. Those things are very strange.”
“All my clothes are down at your place. I’ll have to come get them.”
“Of course.”
“Are you sure she’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“She acts like a bull, that woman, she acts like a dyke.”
“I don’t think she is.”
Mindy got up to go to the bathroom. Bobby looked at me. “I fucked her,” he said. “Don’t blame her. She had no other place to go.”
“I don’t blame her.”
“Valerie took her to Frederick’s to cheer her up. Got her a new outfit.”
Mindy came out of the bathroom. She’d been crying. “Mindy,” I said, “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll be down later for my clothes.”
I got up and walked out the door. Mindy followed me out there. “Hold me,” she said.
I held her. She was crying.
“You’re never going to forget me … never!”
I walked back to my place thinking, I wonder if Bobby fucked Mindy? Bobby and Valerie were into lots of strange new things. I didn’t care for their lack of common feeling. It was the way they did everything without any show of emotion. The same way another person might yawn or boil a potato.
30
To pacify Lydia I agreed to go to Muleshead, Utah. Her sister was camping in the mountains. The sisters actually owned much of the land. It had been inherited from their father. Glendoline, one of the sisters, had a tent pitched in the woods. She was writing a novel, The Wild Woman of the Mountains. The other sisters were to arrive any day. Lydia and I arrived first. We had a pup tent. We squeezed in there the first night and the mosquitoes squeezed in with us. It was terrible.
The next morning we sat around the campfire. Glendoline and Lydia cooked breakfast. I had purchased $40 worth of groceries which included several 6-packs of beer. I had them cooling in a mountain spring. We finished breakfast. I helped with the dishes and then Glendoline brought out her novel and read to us. It wasn’t really bad, but it was very unprofessional and needed a lot of polishing. Glendoline presumed that the reader was as fascinated by her life as she was—which was a deadly mistake. The other deadly mistakes she had made were too numerous to mention.
I walked to the spring and came back with 3 bottles of beer. The girls said no, they didn’t want any. They were very anti-beer. We discussed Glendoline’s novel. I figured that anybody who would read their novel aloud to others had to be suspect. If that wasn’t the old kiss of death, nothing was.
The conversation shifted and the girls started chatting about men, parties, dancing, and sex. Glendoline had a high, excited voice, and laughed nervously, laughed constantly. She was in her mid-forties, quite fat and very sloppy. Besides that, just like me, she was simply ugly.
Glendoline must have talked non-stop for over an hour, entirely about sex. I began to get dizzy. She waved her arms over her head, “I’M THE WILD WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAINS! O WHERE O WHERE IS THE MAN, THE REAL MAN WITH THE COURAGE TO TAKE ME?”
Well, he’s certainly not here, I thought.
I looked at Lydia. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“No,” she said, “I want to read this book.” It was called Love and Orgasm: A Revolutionary Guide to Sexual Fulfillment.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll take a walk then.”
I walked up to the mountain spring. I reached in for another beer, opened it and sat there drinking. I was trapped in the mountains and woods with two crazy women. They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too, but it wasn’t my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn’t seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people.
The main thing, I decided, was to find the right woman. But how? I had a red notebook and a pen with me. I scribbled a meditative poem into it. Then I walked up to the lake. Vance Pastures, the place was called. The sisters owned most of it. I had to take a shit. I took off my pants and squatted in the brush with the flies and the mosquitoes. I’d take the conveniences of the city any time. I had to wipe with leaves. I walked over to the lake and stuck one foot in the water. It was ice cold.
Be a man, old man. Enter.
My skin was ivory white. I felt very old, very soft. I moved out into the ice water. I went in up to my waist, then I took a deep breath and leaped forward. I was all the way in! The mud swirled up from the bottom and got into my ears, my mouth, my hair. I stood there in the muddy water, my teeth chattering.
I waited a long time for the water to settle and clear. Then I walked back out. I got dressed and made my way along the edge of the lake. When I got to the end of the lake I heard a sound like that of a waterfall. I went into a forest, moving toward the sound. I had to climb around some rocks across a gully. The sound came closer and closer. The flies and mosquitoes swarmed all over me. The flies were large and angry and hungry, much larger than city flies, and they knew a meal when they saw one.
I pushed my way through some thick brush and there it was: my first real honest-to-Christ waterfall. The water just poured down the mountain and over a rocky ledge. It was beautiful. It kept coming and coming. That water was coming from somewhere. And it was running off somewhere. There were 3 or 4 streams that probably led to the lake.
Finally I got tired of watching it and decided to go back. I also decided to take a different route back, a shortcut. I worked my way down to the opposite side of the lake and cut off toward camp. I knew about where it was. I still had my red notebook. I stopped and wrote another poem, less meditative, then I went on. I kept walking. The camp didn’t appear. I walked some more. I looked around for the lake. I couldn’t find the lake, I didn’t know where it was. Suddenly it hit me: I was LOST. Those horny sex bitches had driven me out of my mind and now I was LOST. I looked around. There was the backdrop of mountains and all around me were trees and brush. There was no center, no starting point, no connection between anything. I felt fear, real fear. Why had I let them take me out of my city, my Los Angeles? A man could call a cab there, h
e could telephone. There were reasonable solutions to reasonable problems.
Vance Pastures stretched out around me for miles and miles. I threw away my red notebook. What a way for a writer to die! I could see it in the newspaper:
HENRY CHINASKI, MINOR POET, FOUND DEAD IN UTAH WOODS
Henry Chinaski, former post office clerk turned writer, was found in a decomposed state yesterday afternoon by forest ranger W.K. Brooks Jr. Also found near the remains was a small red notebook which evidently contained Mr. Chinaski’s last written work.
I walked on. Soon I was in a soggy area full of water. Every now and then one of my legs would sink to the knee in the bog and I’d have to haul myself out.
I came to a barbed wire fence. I knew immediately that I shouldn’t climb the fence. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do, but there seemed no alternative. I climbed over the fence and stood there, cupped both hands around my mouth and screamed: “LYDIA!”
There was no answer. I tried it again: “LYDIA!”
My voice sounded very mournful. The voice of a coward.
I moved on. It would be nice, I thought, to be back with the sisters, hearing them laugh about sex and men and dancing and parties. It would be so nice to hear Glendoline’s voice. It would be nice to run my hand through Lydia’s long hair. I’d faithfully take her to every party in town. I’d even dance with all the women and make brilliant jokes about everything. I’d endure all that subnormal driveling shit with a smile. I could almost hear myself. “Hey, that’s a great dance tune! Who wants to really go? Who wants to boogie on out?”
I kept walking through the bog. Finally I reached dry land. I got to a road. It was just an old dirt road, but it looked good. I could see tire marks, hoof prints. There were even wires overhead that carried electricity somewhere. All I had to do was follow those wires. I walked along the road. The sun was high in the sky, it must have been noon. I walked along feeling foolish.
I came to a locked gate across the road. What did that mean? There was a small entry at one side of the gate. Evidently the gate was a cattle guard. But where were the cattle? Where was the owner of the cattle? Maybe he only came around every six months.
The top of my head began to ache. I reached up and felt where I had been blackjacked in a Philadelphia bar 30 years before. Some scar tissue remained. Now the scar tissue, baked by the sun, was swollen. It stood up like a small horn. I broke a piece off and threw it in the road.
I walked another hour, then decided to turn back. It meant having to walk all the way back yet I felt it was the thing to do. I took my shirt off and draped it over my head. I stopped once or twice and screamed, “LYDIA!” There was no reply.
Some time later I got back to the gate. All I had to do was walk around it but there was something in the way. It stood in front of the gate, about 15 feet from me. It was a small doe, a fawn, a something.
I moved slowly toward it. It didn’t budge. Was it going to let me by? It didn’t seem to fear me. I guessed it sensed my confusion, my cowardice. I approached closer and closer. It wouldn’t get out of the way. It had large beautiful brown eyes, more beautiful than the eyes of any woman I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. I was within 3 feet of it, ready to back off, when it bolted. It ran off the road and into the woods. It was in excellent shape; it could really run.
As I walked further along the road I heard the sound of running water. I needed water. You couldn’t live very long without water. I left the road and moved toward the sound of rushing water. There was a little hill covered with grass and as I topped the hill there it was: water spilling out of several cement pipes in the face of a dam and into some kind of reservoir. I sat down at the edge of the reservoir and took off my shoes and stockings, pulled up my pants, and stuck my legs into the water. Then I poured water over my head. Then I drank—but not too much or too fast—just like I’d seen it done in the movies.
After recovering a bit I noticed a pier that went out over the reservoir. I walked out on the pier and came to a large metal box bolted to the side of the pier. It was locked with a padlock. There was probably a telephone in there! I could phone for help!
I went and found a large rock and started smashing it against the lock. It wouldn’t give. What the hell would Jack London do? What would Hemingway do? Jean Genet?
I kept smashing the rock against the lock. Sometimes I missed and my hand hit the lock or the metal box itself. Skin ripped, blood flowed. I gathered myself and gave the lock one final blow. It opened. I took it off and opened the metal box. There was no telephone. There were a series of switches and some heavy cables. I reached in, touched a wire, and got a terrible shock. Then I pulled a switch. I heard the roar of water. Out of 3 or 4 of the holes in the concrete face of the dam shot giant white jets of water. I pulled another switch. Three or four other holes opened up, releasing tons of water. I pulled a third switch and the whole dam let loose. I stood and watched the water pouring forth. Maybe I could start a flood and cowboys would come on horses or in rugged little pickup trucks to rescue me. I could see the headline:
HENRY CHINASKI, MINOR POET, FLOODS UTAH COUNTRYSIDE IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS SOFT LOS ANGELES ASS.
I decided against it. I threw all the switches back to normal, closed the metal box, and hung the broken lock back on it.
I left the reservoir, found another road up the way, and began following it. This road seemed more used than the other. I walked along. I had never been so tired. I could hardly see. Suddenly there was a little girl about 5 years old walking towards me. She wore a little blue dress and white shoes. She looked frightened when she saw me. I tried to look pleasant and friendly as I edged towards her.
“Little girl, don’t go away. I won’t hurt you. I’M LOST! Where are your parents? Little girl, take me to your parents!”
The little girl pointed. I saw a trailer and a car parked up ahead. “HEY, I’m LOST!” I shouted. “CHRIST, AM I GLAD TO SEE YOU.”
Lydia stepped around the side of the trailer. Her hair was done up in red curlers. “Come on, city boy,” she said. “Follow me home.”
“I’m so glad to see you, baby, kiss me!”
“No. Follow me.”
Lydia took off running about 20 feet in front of me. It was hard keeping up.
“I asked those people if they had seen a city boy around,” she called back over her shoulder. “They said, No.”
“Lydia, I love you!”
“Come on! You’re slow!”
“Wait, Lydia, wait!”
She vaulted over a barbed wire fence. I couldn’t make it. I got tangled in the wire. I couldn’t move. I was like a trapped cow. “LYDIA!”
She came back with her red curlers and started helping me get loose from the barbs. “I tracked you. I found your red notebook. You got lost deliberately because you were pissed.”
“No, I got lost out of ignorance and fear. I am not a complete person—I’m a stunted city person. I am more or less a failed drizzling shit with absolutely nothing to offer.”
“Christ,” she said, “don’t you think I know that?”
She freed me from the last barb. I lurched after her. I was back with Lydia again.
31
It was 3 or 4 days before I had to fly to Houston to give a reading. I went to the track, drank at the track, and afterwards I went to a bar on Hollywood Boulevard. I went home at 9 or 10 PM. As I moved through the bedroom towards the bathroom I tripped over the telephone cord. I fell against the corner of the bed frame—an edge of steel like a knife blade. When I got up I found I had a deep gash just above the ankle. The blood ran into the rug and I left a bloody trail as I went to the bathroom. The blood ran over the tiles and I left red footprints as I walked about.
There was a knock on the door and I let Bobby in. “Jesus Christ, man, what happened?”
“It’s DEATH,” I said. “I’m bleeding to death….”
“Man,” he said, “you better do something about that leg.”
Valerie knocked. I le
t her in too. She screamed. I poured Bobby and Valerie and myself drinks. The phone rang. It was Lydia.
“Lydia, baby, I’m bleeding to death!”
“Is this one of your dramatic trips again?”
“No, I’m bleeding to death. Ask Valerie.”
Valerie took the phone. “It’s true, his ankle is cut open. There’s blood everywhere and he won’t do anything about it. You better come over….”
When Lydia arrived I was sitting on the couch. “Look, Lydia: DEATH!” Tiny veins were hanging out of the wound like strings of spaghetti. I yanked at some of them. I took my cigarette and tapped ashes into the wound. “I’m a MAN! Hell, I’m a MAN!”
Lydia went and got some hydrogen peroxide and poured it into the wound. It was nice. White foam gushed out of the wound. It sizzled and bubbled. Lydia poured some more in.
“You better go to a hospital,” Bobby said.
“I don’t need a fucking hospital,” I said. “It will cure itself….”
The next morning the wound looked horrible. It was still open and seemed to be forming a nice crust. I went to the drugstore for some more hydrogen peroxide, some bandages, and some epsom salts. I filled the tub full of hot water and epsom salts and got in. I began thinking about myself with only one leg. There were advantages:
HENRY CHINASKI IS, WITHOUT A DOUBT, THE GREATEST ONE-LEGGED POET IN THE WORLD
Bobby came by that afternoon. “You know what it costs to get a leg amputated?”
“$12,000.”
After Bobby left I phoned my doctor.
I went to Houston with a heavily bandaged leg. I was taking antibiotic pills in an attempt to cure the infection. My doctor mentioned that any drinking would nullify the good the antibiotic pills had.
At the reading, which was at the modern art museum, I went on sober. After I read a few poems somebody in the audience asked, “How come you’re not drunk?”
“Henry Chinaski couldn’t make it,” I said. “I’m his brother Efram.”